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Let us begin with virtue and vice in the Soul. What has really
occurred when, as we say, vice is present? In speaking of
extirpating evil and implanting goodness, of introducing order
and beauty to replace a former ugliness, we talk in terms of real
things in the Soul.
Now when we make virtue a harmony, and vice a breach of harmony,
we accept an opinion approved by the ancients; and the theory
helps us decidedly to our solution. For if virtue is simply a
natural concordance among the phases of the Soul, and vice simply
a discord, then there is no further question of any foreign
presence; harmony would be the result of every distinct phase or
faculty joining in, true to itself; discord would mean that not
all chimed in at their best and truest. Consider, for example,
the performers in a choral dance; they sing together though each
one has his particular part, and sometimes one voice is heard
while the others are silent; and each brings to the chorus
something of his own; it is not enough that all lift their voices
together; each must sing, choicely, his own part to the music set
for him. Exactly so in the case of the Soul; there will be
harmony when each faculty performs its appropriate part.
Yes: but this very harmony constituting the virtue of the Soul
must depend upon a previous virtue, that of each several faculty
within itself; and before there can be the vice of discord there
must be the vice of the single parts, and these can be bad only
by the actual presence of vice as they can be good only by the
presence of virtue. It is true that no presence is affirmed when
vice is identified with ignorance in the reasoning faculty of the
Soul; ignorance is not a positive thing; but in the presence of
false judgements- the main cause of vice- must it not be admitted
that something positive has entered into the Soul, something
perverting the reasoning faculty? So, the initiative faculty; is
it not, itself, altered as one varies between timidity and
boldness? And the desiring faculty, similarly, as it runs wild or
accepts control?
Our teaching is that when the particular faculty is sound it
performs the reasonable act of its essential nature, obeying the
reasoning faculty in it which derives from the Intellectual
Principle and communicates to the rest. And this following of
reason is not the acceptance of an imposed shape; it is like
using the eyes; the Soul sees by its act, that of looking towards
reason. The faculty of sight in the performance of its act is
essentially what it was when it lay latent; its act is not a
change in it, but simply its entering into the relation that
belongs to its essential character; it knows- that is, sees-
without suffering any change: so, precisely, the reasoning phase
of the Soul stands towards the Intellectual Principle; this it
sees by its very essence; this vision is its knowing faculty; it
takes in no stamp, no impression; all that enters it is the
object of vision- possessed, once more, without possession; it
possesses by the fact of knowing but "without possession" in the
sense that there is no incorporation of anything left behind by
the object of vision, like the impression of the seal on
sealing-wax.
And note that we do not appeal to stored-up impressions to
account for memory: we think of the mind awakening its powers in
such a way as to possess something not present to it.
Very good: but is it not different before and after acquiring the
memory?
Be it so; but it has suffered no change- unless we are to think
of the mere progress from latency to actuality as change- nothing
has been introduced into the mind; it has simply achieved the Act
dictated by its nature.
It is universally true that the characteristic Act of immaterial
entities is performed without any change in them- otherwise they
would at last be worn away- theirs is the Act of the unmoving;
where act means suffering change, there is Matter: an immaterial
Being would have no ground of permanence if its very Act changed
it.
Thus in the case of Sight, the seeing faculty is in act but the
material organ alone suffers change: judgements are similar to
visual experiences.
But how explain the alternation of timidity and daring in the
initiative faculty?
Timidity would come by the failure to look towards the
Reason-Principle or by looking towards some inferior phase of it
or by some defect in the organs of action- some lack or flaw in
the bodily equipment- or by outside prevention of the natural act
or by the mere absence of adequate stimulus: boldness would arise
from the reverse conditions: neither implies any change, or even
any experience, in the Soul.
So with the faculty of desire: what we call loose living is
caused by its acting unaccompanied; it has done all of itself;
the other faculties, whose business it is to make their presence
felt in control and to point the right way, have lain in
abeyance; the Seer in the Soul was occupied elsewhere, for,
though not always at least sometimes, it has leisure for a
certain degree of contemplation of other concerns.
Often, moreover, the vice of the desiring faculty will be merely
some ill condition of the body, and its virtue, bodily soundness;
thus there would again be no question of anything imported into
the Soul.
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